Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

He thought of standing for Fine Gael in my constituency, but when push came to shove he did not do it. As I said, Vincent Browne used to refer to mayors and lord mayors as "toy town mayors" because they only had a year in office with limited powers. My preferred model was to have a mayor with strong executive powers for all of the Dublin area.

I hope that what will emerge is a mayor directly elected and answerable to a small cabinet of key councillors and experts. I believe the mayor and his or her assembly should be responsible for and decide all the key traditional local government functions. We could go further and provide that areas such as transport provision and, perhaps, education and security would come within the remit of the mayor. As stated by Deputy Terence Flanagan and others, great cities like London, Paris, Rome, New York and others have benefited from having a strong elected leader.

One of the ironies of this Bill is that local government has been steadily losing powers, including in respect of waste management and housing. The Government proposes to remove the powers of local government in respect of water and drainage. It is important to note that while this Bill proposes to give additional powers to local government, it also removes vast powers from it.

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